Glitches in a statewide computer network left
hundreds of Duval County residents frustrated
when they could not get their license tags
renewed Monday and yesterday, but officials
said they have cleared up the problem.

As many as 30 Florida counties experienced
disruptions in their connections with the
statewide network. The foul-ups were not
related to Leap Day and the so-called Y29 bug,
stemming from the inability of some computers
to recognize Feb. 29, state officials said.

Instead, the problem was traced to a change the
state made during the weekend to expand the
capacity of its system, which handles a huge
amount of data, including driver licenses and
license tags. The new version contained some
technological changes that the state's computer
vendor, Intermediate Communications, did not
know about, said Roy Cales, chief information
officer for the state.

Those changes caused the system to bog down
during periods of high activity, Cales said.

"It's like closing down Interstate 95 and routing
all the traffic to A1A," said Carl Ford, assistant
director for the state Division of Motor Vehicles.

"It's unfortunate and it's especially irritating to
people who wait in line for hours," Cales said.
"We know that."

In Duval County, some branches of the tax
collector could not get into the state system for
hours. Even when the system was available, it
would take 30 minutes to process a single
license tag renewal because the computer
moved so slowly, Duval County officials said.

For example, the Beaches branch of the tax
office was able to process about 200 license tags
Monday, about half the usual amount. That
squeeze happened as the number of people
coming into the office swelled as they sought to
get new tags before month's end.

The problems with the computer network came
at "absolutely the worst time," said Todd
Norman, assistant to the tax collector.

By early yesterday afternoon, the state had
removed the capacity upgrades and restored the
system to the way it was before making the
changes during the weekend.

Cales said the state will need to expand the
capacity at a later date, but will not try again
until programmers can determine what went
wrong. He said the state will do more testing as
well before installation.